Battle of the decades: Generational differences in the retention of Australian aged care employees
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Author(s)
Radford, Katrina
Shacklock, Kate
Bradley, Graham
Year published
2012
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The ageing workforce, global shortage of nurses and the increased reliance on quality health care services for the aged have created a need to ensure a quality workforce exists within the aged care sector. However, Australia's ageing population brings with it an ageing workforce, where for the first time in history, employers are left to respond to the benefits and challenges of having up to four generations of employees working alongside each other. For human resource management professionals, age diversity can be particularly challenging as research has found that each generation is motivated to stay in an organisation ...
View more >The ageing workforce, global shortage of nurses and the increased reliance on quality health care services for the aged have created a need to ensure a quality workforce exists within the aged care sector. However, Australia's ageing population brings with it an ageing workforce, where for the first time in history, employers are left to respond to the benefits and challenges of having up to four generations of employees working alongside each other. For human resource management professionals, age diversity can be particularly challenging as research has found that each generation is motivated to stay in an organisation by different Human Resource Management strategies. Therefore, it becomes necessary to examine generational differences in the context of aged care employees to ensure an appropriate workforce exists to respond to the need. This paper presents the findings of 330 employee's qualitative responses to open ended survey questions relating to their short term and long term retention motives. Results suggest that older workers are motivated to stay in both the short term and long term by pay, job stability and security, the work itself, and a supportive culture from management and the organisations. However, younger workers are motivated to stay by ensuring career opportunities are available to them as well as the work itself, and supportive culture. This research provides the aged care sector with significant information on the retention of aged care workers that can be used to enhance policies, processes, and guidelines around the retention of its core workforce
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View more >The ageing workforce, global shortage of nurses and the increased reliance on quality health care services for the aged have created a need to ensure a quality workforce exists within the aged care sector. However, Australia's ageing population brings with it an ageing workforce, where for the first time in history, employers are left to respond to the benefits and challenges of having up to four generations of employees working alongside each other. For human resource management professionals, age diversity can be particularly challenging as research has found that each generation is motivated to stay in an organisation by different Human Resource Management strategies. Therefore, it becomes necessary to examine generational differences in the context of aged care employees to ensure an appropriate workforce exists to respond to the need. This paper presents the findings of 330 employee's qualitative responses to open ended survey questions relating to their short term and long term retention motives. Results suggest that older workers are motivated to stay in both the short term and long term by pay, job stability and security, the work itself, and a supportive culture from management and the organisations. However, younger workers are motivated to stay by ensuring career opportunities are available to them as well as the work itself, and supportive culture. This research provides the aged care sector with significant information on the retention of aged care workers that can be used to enhance policies, processes, and guidelines around the retention of its core workforce
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Conference Title
11th National Conference of Emerging Researchers in Ageing: Making an Impact
Publisher URI
Copyright Statement
© 2012 Emerging Researchers in Ageing. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the conference's website for access to the definitive, published version.
Subject
Business and Management not elsewhere classified